Story By: Sergiu Nazaru, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Newsflash
These two little boys aged 18 months and 3 years old have died after eating grapes growing in the family courtyard that had been sprayed with a lethal insecticide.
Police are still trying to investigate who sprayed the grapes, and whether it was an incorrect concentration or whether it was an illegal insecticide.
The tragedy struck the family in Coarnele Caprei commune, in north eastern Romania’s Iasi county. The youngest boy, Gabriel Bughius, collapsed first then his older brother, who was not named, was taken ill a short while later.
The boys had eaten the grapes on Friday, 21th August. Their mother, Roxana Bughius, said that the next day some 24 hours later she noticed that the children were feeling unwell, and called the emergency services number in Romania which is 112.
The youngest boy, however, died despite the fact that medics who arrived in an air ambulance spent 45 minutes attempting to resuscitate him.
The slightly older child was taken to hospital, but died a short while later at the “Sf. Maria” Children’s Hospital in Iasi.
Diana Cimpoesu, head of the local emergency rescue unit SMURD Iasi, said: “Staff from the ambulance helicopter found the one-and-a-half-year-old child, Gabriel Bughius, in cardiopulmonary arrest. The boy was mechanically ventilated and resuscitated for 45 minutes, without result, and his death could only be confirmed at the scene.”
She added: “The other child, three years old, A.B., was found drowsy, slightly confused and with bilateral mydriasis and transported to the hospital. It is supposed to be an organophosphorus intoxication. Their mother said she believed it was caused by the grapes she had given them to eat.”
Speaking to local media Bzi.ro the mother said: “I have no power to speak. I do not know anything anymore.”
The parents of the two children had worked abroad for several years in order to own enough money to renovate the house the family lived in after Roxana inherited it from her father.
Roxana and her two children returned home to Coarnele Caprei commune to supervise the renovation of the house while her husband, the father of the boys had remained abroad to continue to work and earn money.
Now, Valentin is going to return home from Germany for the funeral of the 2 children that he and his wife had worked so hard for to build a better future.
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